


Firelight

by PrecariousSauce



Category: Street Fighter, Tekken
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Angst, Doomed Relationship, F/M, Gratuitous Headcanon, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 18:06:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15078710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrecariousSauce/pseuds/PrecariousSauce
Summary: “You hold yourself back,” Akuma remarks, a simple statement of fact.Her eyes flicker. The red in them is not from the setting sun.“I know,” Kazumi replies.





	Firelight

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains copious slander of Heihachi Mishima because Tekken 7 came too little too late for me to believe Harada when he says "Heihachi was not a bad person actually". You have been notified.

She is young when he first meets her.

She is young, beautiful, clean, refined. She is everything The Man Who Calls Himself Akuma is not. And under any other circumstance that would be enough for him to decide she wasn’t worth a second glance.

But as she found him on the brink of death, unable to even roll away from her as she cleans and dresses his wounds let alone push her away when she picked him up off the forest floor, there’s no avoiding the girl. All he can do is stare at her, picking her apart.

Her hair is elaborately styled, held together by ribbons and a golden hairpin– each piece of clothing and jewelry she wears is worth more individually than everything Akuma has ever owned. The manor she dragged him into is twice as large as Goutetsu’s humble dojo and immaculately kept by the servants that scurried out of her way as his blood ruined the wood and tatami floors. She lives like royalty. She carries herself like a princess.

But a princess does not have callused knuckles and a grip like iron. A princess cannot carry a man twice her size without help, and certainly does not take blood staining her clothes without a word. A princess’s glare does not send everyone in her way scattering like autumn leaves.

He looks at her eyes, the brown nearly red in the light from the hearth– something is burning in her. Her _ki_ is strong, far stronger than her size betrays, and it _writhes_ inside her. It beats at her in a desperate bid to break forth, and every time it does Akuma feels it like an echo of a distant scream.

It is _almost_ the Satsui no Hado. _Almost_. The Satsui no Hado never felt like fire. It never felt _alive._

Whatever is within her, to contain it must take strength beyond measure. His fingers twitch– to fight her could be _magnificent_.

She speaks suddenly, voice light but commanding; “Care to explain why you were bleeding to death on my property?”

He first is silent. He stares at her eyes and she meets his gaze without flinching. Her gaze is cutting, pinning, heavy enough to make a lesser man wither under its weight.

“There was a battle,” Akuma replies, slowly, drawing on what strength remains to reach absently for the prayer beads around his neck, “I was victorious. It was not without cost.”

She raises an imperious eyebrow; “Whether you die during the battle or several hours later, a fight that kills you is not a fight you win. A total victory is the only kind that matters.”

He narrows his eyes; “Who are you, girl?”

“Kazumi Hachijou,” she replies, straightening up so she can look down her nose, “And you are?”

“Akuma.”

His chosen name first makes her freeze, eyes going wide, before it then makes her burst out laughing. Her _ki_ brightens, swirling inside her in mirthful spirals. He does not understand. He tells her this.

The only answer she gives is, “Don’t mind it– Simply a coincidence.”

* * *

He stays in the Hachijou Estate for a week before he challenges Kazumi for the first time.

Before then he observes her carefully– She may have him hidden away in a side room like a pet she’s not allowed to keep, but _shoji_ are thin enough for him to listen through. She answers constantly to her parents, to the clan elders, and they dissect her every move. They disapprove of his presence. It speaks to an independent streak they’re in the process of breaking. She is their heir, and the crux of something greater than this house they never give voice to. Everything hangs on her obedience.

There is a great beast that follows at her heels. He sees it first in silhouette, sitting just outside the _shoji_ , and he feels its eyes on him as its tail lashes back and forth like a serpent. Even after it follows her into the room and Akuma meets the tiger face to face it prowls past him in the middle of the night, growling low in its chest. It disapproves of his presence. But for how it rubs at Kazumi’s legs like a housecat, he thinks it’s for different reasons altogether.

Kazumi does not obey her elders but does not defy them– every single day she says he will be gone the next. Those she speaks to are similar to her, with _ki_ that crackles like embers, but it is nothing like the wildfire within her. She is stronger than them, and every single one of them knows it. But she bows and defers and apologizes and comes in from the hallway with a deep crease between her brows.

He does not understand. There is only one way a man like him _can_ understand. So he challenges her.

Kazumi lets out an awkward snort of a laugh– one only he has heard. She has nothing to prove to the man who will one day disappear.

“Why would I undo all my hard work?” she asks, gesturing to a fading bruise on his arm.

He sneers down at her– even sitting he towers above the girl; “I will not be indebted to someone unworthy. I would test your strength– If it is lacking, I will owe you nothing.”

She gapes at him, the pure offense on her face born not from the privilege she wears like armor but how her grip on her kimono threatens to tear it. Good. Wounded pride, he’s found, is the best kindling for a battle.

Her smirk is fierce and bright; “You’re going to regret those words.”

The battle is a tie, but still enough for Akuma to read her. Her style is an amalgam, two different schools scraping against each other, their points of friction leaving her open. She wields one with pride, the other she treats as an obligation. When the force within her bubbles up and nearly breaks past the surface Akuma feels it like a burning desert wind against his skin– it stuns him long enough that she’s able to take advantage of the opening and knock him away.

She is not stronger than him. Not yet. But the potential boiling inside her is enormous. One day she could defeat him. One day she could _end_ him.

As they stand in the forest behind the manor, each breathing heavy, he knows they are at an impasse.

“You hold yourself back,” Akuma remarks, a simple statement of fact.

Her eyes flicker. The red in them is not from the setting sun.

“I know,” she replies.

* * *

Before he leaves the estate, he asks her price for his debt.

She smiles and tells him she will think on it.

It’s only years later that he realizes she’d held onto that debt to keep him from straying too far.

But he wonders why she thought she needed to– She is remarkably good at finding him. And she finds him, often. She will arrive to whatever remote corner of nature he’s training in with her tiger in tow, frustration sloughing off of her in waves, but smiling when he catches her eye. He asks her if she’s here to collect. She says she’s still thinking on it. They battle. The match comes to a tie. She stays, sometimes for weeks, before returning home. And it repeats, over and over again.

It starts perplexing. He thinks it should be irritating. It never is. It could be pleasant. But _pleasant_ isn’t what the _Satsui no Hado_ demands, so it isn’t.

Kazumi does not explain herself to him, not at length. But she is not silent. He learns of her life in pieces. He learns that the Hachijou are important– or they may have been, once upon a time. They are guardians of the power she carries, they’ve tried countless times to mold it into a force for good, and countless times it’s consumed them and they die in phoenix-like blazes of chaos. They do not rise from the ashes but dwindle as coals in an abandoned bonfire. Kazumi is their last hope.

“My master tried to walk a path of balance,” Akuma tells her one day as she washes her face in a stream, “He taught us an art meant to kill. It tapped into the _Satsui no Hado_ , the darker side of _ki_ , but he would not let it consume him.”

She pauses; “He sounds admirable.”

Akuma scowls; “He lacked conviction. Balance is an impossible dream– my brother pursues it endlessly and is weakened for every second he wastes. I chose the _Satsui no Hado_ , embraced it fully, and when I returned to face our master in a duel to the death I came out victorious. One day I will triumph over my brother as well. It is an inevitability.”

Kazumi says nothing. She stares at her reflection in the water.

Then she drags her fingers through the stream, breaking her own image, before looking over her shoulder; “Do you ever regret it?”

“Never.”

She laughs, another awkward snort; “I see– I envy you, then.”

Akuma’s throat is dry. He does not understand.

Kazumi often comes to him frustrated, and he learns this is often one single man’s fault. His name is Heihachi Mishima. It will be years before Akuma meets him. It will be days before he hates him.

Kazumi speaks sparingly of herself but constantly of Heihachi between savage blows as they fight across the empty island or forest she tracked Akuma to. He learns that they have trained together, grown together, done far too much together for far too long. He learns that Heihachi’s father taught her the style that chafes at her, rubs her raw and blistered with every strike. And he learns, more than he learns anything else, that Heihachi Mishima is an incredibly unpleasant young man.

“He’s _arrogant_ ,” she snaps around a strike as they spar at a cliff’s edge, “He’s _selfish_ , he’s _shortsighted_ , he’s absolutely _brimming_ with “natural talent” so he’s never worked for _anything_ , he thinks the world’s owed to him on a _platter_ –“

Akuma’s palm thrust hits her chest, briefly silencing her; “Focus.”

She does not; “And he never leaves me _alone!_ He carved our names under a ridiculous _umbrella_ on one of the floorboards in their temple, where I’d _have to see it_ –“

“You are stronger than him,” Akuma remarks, a simple statement of fact, “You could punish him for his insolence.”

Her _ki_ ripples under her skin and bursts out as showers of sparks with each hit she lands; “No I _can’t_ –“

“You can,” Akuma cuts her off, grabbing her arm and nearly twisting it behind her before she breaks his hold, “You are stronger than him. You _can_. You have decided that you won’t. Why?”

She grits her teeth, the sparks become bolts of electricity that sear his flesh on contact; “There’s a _plan_. They’ve been drafting it since before I was born so I have to follow every step to the letter.”

“You are stronger than _them_ ,” Akuma points out, finally catching her in a tight hold, “Why do you let them make your choices?”

She does not break his hold– she does the opposite, leaning closer to him, so close their faces nearly touch. Her face is flushed, pupils wide. She’s waiting. He does not understand. He does not move.

She looks away and sighs, “They’re my family.”

He tilts his head to the side; “My brother is family. We also disagree, and I plan to kill him one day. Why is this different?”

She is quiet for a long time.

“I don’t know,” Kazumi finally replies, “Maybe it’s not different at all.”

She twists to break his hold and het lets her go. This match is over– another tie. She wanders to the cliff’s edge and sits with her legs dangling off into the air. He settles beside her, crosslegged. She stares off into the middle distance, straining to keep her eyes even half-open, gaze empty and cold. Her tiger settles between them, massive head leaning against Akuma’s leg as its tail is contentedly still.

“This is nice,” she murmurs, to herself, “Could it be like this all the time if I just… left? Would you even let me stay?”

“What you do is none of my concern,” Akuma replies, a simple statement of fact.

Kazumi’s fingers thread through the fur on her tiger’s head, her hand nearly touching Akuma’s knee, and he thinks that her world is far more complicated than he will ever grasp.

He only knows that her family holds her back. That _Heihachi_ holds her back. Without them the fire within her could burn down the world. They smother her slowly, killing the warrior she could become.

As he watches Kazumi’s hollow eyes stare out at the horizon he decides that he hates each and every one of them.

* * *

Kazumi grows older. She grows into her grace and her composure. She remains fierce and proud. She becomes more beautiful. If he has changed, he cannot see it.

She is the heir of a great house– More and more responsibility falls on her shoulders, and the plan for her moves steadily forward. He sees her less and less, but when he does she comes closer and closer to letting what lies inside her burst forth. It is not the _Satsui no Hado_ , but it is close, close enough for Akuma to reason why.

The _Satsui no Hado_ feeds on anger, on hatred, on killing intent. She is turning hers inward, turning it into fuel for the raging flames, and only letting them loose when they meet. He does not know what will happen to her if she keeps letting it fester. Trying to think about it makes him feel cold. He does not understand.

She finds him one day, and when he sees her coming up the hill towards him she is not angry. She moves slowly, like her legs are made from lead, and she stares resolutely ahead. Her eyes see past him. _Through_ him. Her tiger’s tail lashes back and forth and it growls, its claws raking through the dirt. Kazumi stops, yards between the two of them, and finally meets his eyes.

Before he can ask her if she’s come to collect, she says, “I have to marry Heihachi,” a simple statement of fact.

He stares down at her.

Some long-neglected part of him he can no longer name twists.

“Why?”

“That was always the plan,” she replies, “He’ll bring ruin to the world. So will his son. Someone has to get close enough to stop him quickly and quietly.”

Akuma glares; “Why does that have to be _you?_ ”

She gazes up at him. Her eyes are wide. Her mouth is small, pressed tightly shut. Akuma knows her– she’s asked that question her whole life. No one else ever has. She bites her lip, eyes searching his face for something he cannot put words to. She’s waiting. He says nothing. He does not know what she’s waiting for.

So she closes her eyes and says around a sigh, “The timing was right– Simply a coincidence.”

Her wedding approaches slowly, but inevitably. She flickers in and out of his life, and when she is there her spirit is weak like the flame of a candle that’s burned down to the end of its wick. She is not a bride walking down an aisle but a prisoner marching to her execution. Perhaps that’s what she’d always been.

When he is alone Akuma collapses cliffs, burns forests, channels his rage out into the world– At once the _Satsui no Hado’s_ power within him is stronger than it’s ever been while its familiar and consistent presence fluctuates and even threatens to disappear. He does not understand. The _Satsui no Hado_ feeds off of rage, off of hatred, off of killing intent, and Akuma feels nothing but the desire to take the skull of Heihachi Mishima and every single member of the Hachijou Clan and crush them in his fist. He does not _understand_ , and that makes him even _angrier_ , and the cycle never ends.

Akuma likes simplicity, as much as he can like anything. This is more complicated than he will ever grasp. He wants to blame Kazumi. He never does.

For the first time, but not the last, she sends for him. He answers without a second’s hesitation.

The Mishima Estate is grander than the Hachijou Estate and further from civilization. The manor is larger, as is the property surrounding it, but to Akuma they are the same– monuments of excess surrounded by trees. Kazumi meets him in the trees. Her hair hangs long and loose, not a single ribbon or pin holding it up, shining in the dappled moonlight. There’s only a nightgown between her and the night air. Her armor is gone.

Akuma has trouble breathing. He stops, yards between them, unable to push himself forward.

He does not _understand_.

“I’m getting married in the morning,” she says, voice a frightened whisper.

“Are you collecting on your debt?” Akuma asks, because that’s all he _can_ ask.

She laughs, an awkward snort, through tears; “I still haven’t decided… I just wanted to see you… I don’t know what to do, Akuma, I haven’t for a long time, and–“

Akuma likes simplicity.

So he simply asks, “What do you _want?_ ”

She stares at him, eyes wide, mouth hanging open.

She takes a step towards him.

Another.

And another.

Enough to bring her inches away from him. She leans in, pressing her face into his chest, hands coming up to grab fistfuls of his gi. He can’t move. He does not understand.

She chokes out through a sob, “I want to burn the Mishima Estate to the ground. I want to beat Heihachi’s face in until he stops moving. I want to be Kazumi Hachijou until I die. I want to _run_. I want to go away, far away from everything. I want a child I can _keep…_ ”

Kazumi looks up, meeting his eyes; “If I said my price was that I wanted you to take me away, would you do it?”

And he understands.

He understands himself. He understands _her_. He understands what it is to be caught between two paths. He understands what it is to make an impossible choice.

And he makes it in a heartbeat; “Yes.”

The tears cut clean lines down her cheeks and she smiles, warm like a hearth. Firelight dances red in her eyes. Akuma wants to burn alive in it.

“I’m still thinking on it,” she murmurs, “I’ll tell you when I’ve decided.”

“You will have to, one day,” he remarks, a simple statement of fact, as he reaches up to brush the tears off her cheek.

“I know,” she replies.

* * *

She is older when he last meets her.

A princess had rescued him from the jaws of death all those years ago. The woman who sent for The Man Who Calls Himself Akuma and now sits with her back to him, facing the fire, is a queen. She is a mother. She has been another man’s wife for far longer than she ever wanted to be. She sits with her back straight, her head held high.

She has changed. But he does not realize how much until she speaks.

“Heihachi has become stronger than I could’ve ever anticipated. Should I fail… I want you to kill him for me. And also… Kazuya, my son. If I fall, no one will be able to stop him. That is my price. If you succeed, your debt is paid.”

Kazumi had walked a razor’s edge her whole life, stood at the crossroads of an impossible choice for as long as she could. But Akuma does not realize that all along he’d been _sure_ she would make the same choice he did until she says those words and his blood turns to ice in his veins.

And he finds himself asking, “This is truly what you want?”

She finally turns to him, eyes hollow, empty, and cold; “What I want doesn’t matter anymore.”

Kazumi made her choice. It was the same choice she’d been making every day, since she’d decided to bear Heihachi’s attentions, since she’d decided to defer to her family, since she’d agreed to marry a man she would never love and have a child born to die.

Her duty comes first.

He knows her. He understands.


End file.
